Unloved dog the hero as school buses fail to deliver

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First Student was marketed as recession-proof because children have to go to school whatever the state of the economyPaul Edmondson/Getty Images

Robert LeaIndustrial Editor

Last updated at 12:00AM, November 10 2011

FirstGroup’s £1.9 billion takeover of the American school bus business Laidlaw
five years ago was the deal that did not deliver, the group’s chief has
admitted.

But a shake-up of the American business would start delivering in the coming
months, Tim O’Toole promised yesterday, as the extent of the decline at the
operator of the First Student yellow buses was laid bare.

Mr O’Toole, the American who took over as chief executive from Sir Moir
Lockhead last year, was forced to report this year that profits at First
Student, a £1.5 billion revenue business, had dived 30 per cent in